There are a couple of ways you can play chess on-line; by email or on a chess server.

Chess by mail

This follows the same principle as Postal Chess except of course it uses email. There are a few sites who can help you make contact with others wanting to play and act as a post-office of sorts to collect statistics and such.

• CorrespondenceChess.com
• International Correspondence Chess Federation
• Irish Correspondence Chess Association
• WORLD CORRESPONDENCE CHESS FEDERATION
• International Email Chess Group
• International E-mail Chess Club
• kNights Of the Square Table -- "NOST" Chess is a part of the NOST, so are Chess Variants and Non-Chess Games (Checkers, Secret Words, Pigs and Bulls...and More!). All are covered in articles, ladders and games in NOSTalgia, the bimonthly magazine of the NOST.

Check out Chessopolis for more links; also look for Web-interfaces for a slightly different experience.

Chess Servers

Generally all chess servers use the same technology allowing you to play over the Internet in real-time. The great advantage of such servers is you can usually find a match at any time of the day since visitors to these servers are world-wide in every time zone. On some servers, you can even play (or watch) Grand Masters or better.

There are 3 types of server;

Free Servers

These are publicly available servers which anyone can access and join.

• FICS: Free Internet Chess Server - web page - telnet to server
• Australian FICS - web page - telnet to server
• Brazilian FICS - web page - telnet to server
• Chilean FICS - telnet to server
• Croatian FICS - telnet to server
• Dutch FICS - web page - telnet to server
• French FICS - web page - telnet to server
• German FICS - web page - telnet to server
• Swedish FICS - web page - telnet to server

Private Servers

Private servers are like Free Servers but where membership is regulated to avoid disruptive people abusing the service.
We are thinking of operating such a server from this address; if you would be interested in using such a service, please drop us a line.

• International Champion Chess Network (ICS) - web page - telnet to server

Commercial Chess Servers

Basically you often have to pay (one way or another) for using to these servers which operate either as or by commercial organisations although you can usually play for free as an anonymous player. Many of these servers are not compatible with ICS technologies so you play using programs like Xboard or Winboard.

• ICC: Internet Chess Club (ICS) - web page - telnet to server
• US Chess Live (ICS) - web page - telnet to server
• Chess.Net (ICS) - web page - telnet to server

To play on any of these servers you will require a chess program capable of talking to the servers, and of course access to the Internet. Because of the difficulty in preventing players from using computer programs helping as they play, most online matches are Blitz.